


November

by ottermo



Series: Fandot Creativity [11]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Fandot Creativity, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-10-06 03:38:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Backdating my fills from the 25th Creativity Night, November 2016.So far: Arthur writes some apologetic notes (and hangs some Christmas lights), Carolyn explores a blanket fort, we visitanotherWorld War 2 AU in which the gang are Bletchley Codebreakers, and Martin has a sudden realisation about his newborn son...





	1. Apologies

 

14 jully 19 86  
dear mum i am very Sorry fore the varse being Smashed i will be more carful next time. love from ARTHUR xxxxxxx

 

* * *

 

28th october 1990  
Dear mum  
I am sorry about making you scared today. I really did think it was a shortcut thogh. Tommorrow I will walk the proper way so I’m not late and you will know i am not lieing in a ditch. And thanks for being worried about me maybe being in a ditch even thogh i am an inconsideret boy. I love you very much  
Love from ARTHUR xxxxxxxxxx

 

* * *

 

 

5th May 1994  
Mum,  
I’m really sorry!!!!!!! I’ll clean it up as soon as I get in!!!!!!!  
Love Arthur xxxxx

 

* * *

 

12th November 2000  
Dear Mum,  
I’ve gone out for a walk with Rex. I hope you’re OK. I’m really, really, really sorry. I don’t know how to make it better and I know it is my fault. Maybe if I was more like Dad wanted me to be then it would be different, wouldn’t it. I’m really sorry. I’ll be back later and make some more tea. I love you. I’m sorry.  
Love from Arthur xxxxxxxxxxx

 

* * *

 

13th June 2006  
Mum! Somebody phoned about the pilot’s job!! His name is Douglas and he sounded really nice! And he gave me a number but I couldn’t find a pen and I panicked and lied and said I had one to write it down!! So he thinks we’ve got his number to phone him back but we haven’t. I’m really sorry. That was a really silly thing to do and I understand if I can’t be the steward now when we have an airline but maybe he’ll phone back and it will be all right. I love you!!!!  
Love Arthur xxxxxxx

 

* * *

 

 

20th August 2007  
Hi Mum,  
I’m sorry about Nigel leaving and I hope it wasn’t too much my fault. And I’m sorry I can’t help with the money and things. It must be really a lot of worries for you and I wish I could make it easier but I’m not very good at maths, well, you know that already. Douglas says to put an advert out anyway, because you might find someone desparate enough to do it for less money. I hope that helps. I’ve taken Snoop for a walk. See you later. Love from Arthur xxxxx

 

* * *

 

 

2nd March 2012  
Mum!! Hello. Can you please text Martin if you want me, I left my phone in the hotel in Pisa!! Sorry!!!!  
Love Arthur xxxxxxxx

 

* * *

 

 

11th January 2015  
Dear Mum,  
I’m sorry for being gloomy this morning, I know it isn’t your fault about Martin, I know it’s good and he’s having a good time and I should be happy for him. I’ve gone to Douglas’s. He says you can meet us there. Bring Herc as well. Love Arthur xxxxxxxxx

 

* * *

 

 

26th November 2016  
Mum! I’m sorry I was snooping around in your bedroom, I was looking to see if you’d written a Christmas list. I didn’t find one so if you’ve hidden it, good hiding! But I did find this box with all my apology letters in from ages and ages ago. I didn’t know you’d kept them, that’s so funny. You don’t have to keep this one if you don’t want to. I’m going to hide it with the others and see if you notice. Haha! I love you! Love Arthur xxxxxxx

 

 


	2. Christmas Lights

“Chaps, come and look at this! Mum’s letting me hang the little twinkly lights in the portacabin!”

“Really? That sounds… unsafe.”

“She actually _asked_ you to?”

“Umm… She said, ‘you’re not to hang the infernal things anywhere in the house, but beyond that, I couldn’t care less what you do with them’. So I thought I’d put them up in here!”

“I see. And you don’t, for one moment, suppose you might have misinterpreted what she meant by that?”

“No, I don’t think so! She’ll love them when she sees them. Come inside! Come on!”

“All right, all right, we’re coming.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“It's… Yes, it’s very nice. Well done.”

“Douglas?”

“I think what it lacks in composition, it makes up for in… bulk. Were you going for a particular pattern?”

“Haha, don’t be silly, Douglas. Gerti hasn’t got any patterns. She’s just plain white with the bit of writing on. I would have thought you remembered that after that time when you told me to put some stripes and Mum told you off for it.”

“Yes, of course. So, this… outline… This is Gerti, then. Yes, I see it now.”

“What are those bits?”

“That’s you and Douglas. And Father Christmas in the middle.”

“Oh, he's… He’s in the flight deck with us.”

“Yep!”

“Is that– I don’t think that’s allowed.”

“Martin…”

“Yeah, don’t worry Skip, it’s not real! Even though it looks so lifelike.”

“I’m more interested in _how_ he’s sitting. Is he resting gently on our laps, one Fatherly cheek on each of our legs, or–”

“No, he’s sitting upright.”

“…Right, of course.”

“Well, I for one can’t wait for your mother to see this in the morning, Arthur.”

“Ah, thanks, Skip! I’m excited too!”

 


	3. Congratulations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This FCN occurred during the very heights of my obsession with Community (which is a gift unto mankind, and if you want a found-family show with similar values to CP, please look it up) so this fic is a shameless reference to one of my favourite episodes... but no prior knowledge of the show is required!
> 
> Set in the same universe as Ankavandra, my never-ending post Zurich fic.

It was suspiciously quiet upstairs. Carolyn frowned a little, and was on her way to investigate when her phone started ringing, so she stopped on the way to pick up. “Martin!” she said in a hushed voice. “Any news?”

“Yes!” came the response, “It’s a boy!”

“Oh, congratulations! And is everything all right?”

“Yes, all fine, thanks. It was a bit iffy for a while, but Theresa’s doing really well now. Can you put Aida on? I want to tell her about her brother.”

Carolyn continued on her journey to the stairs. “I was just on my way to find out what she and Arthur are up to. They were upstairs moving things and thumping around not long ago, and now they’re quiet as mice.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yes, probably.”

“I hope she hasn’t broken anything. If she has, just let us know how much–”

She tutted. “Don’t be silly, Martin. It’ll only have been an accident.”

“I don’t want you to think we’re taking advantage, that’s all… It was so good of you to have her while we’ve been in here. She doesn’t get on with most of her nannies… She loves you two, though.”

“Of course she does, she’s a clever girl.” Carolyn walked along the hall at the top of the stairs, and turned the corner that led to Arthur’s wing. Her progress was somewhat hindered by the presence of a little tent-shaped structure, overhung with a green, fluffy blanket, which was apparently just the entrance to a far larger, longer, blankety tunnel.

“Oh good heavens,” Carolyn said. She held one flap of the blanket aside to call down the tube. “Arthur!”

“What? What is it?” Martin asked.

“No, nothing to worry about,” she assured him. “I suspect I know why they’re so quiet. Let me phone you back in two minutes. I won’t say a word to Aida, you can do it when I call.”

“All right,” said Martin, sounding bemused.

Carolyn hung up, and very begrudgingly got down on her hands and knees. “I’m too old for this,” she murmured, but began to crawl forwards anyway, down the carefully balanced tunnel made of blankets and chairs and into the study that (uselessly) adjoined Arthur’s room, where the blanket-walled palace expanded a little, giving her space to stand up, if at a stooping height. The blankets were draped this way and that, one over the door and sloping down to the desk, another knotted onto the desk drawer and pulled up to the bookshelf on the far wall. Bedsheets were pegged over the diagonal blankets to form walls, and sleeping bags and towels lined the floor, so that no furniture was really visible. The blanket palace narrowed with the doorway into Arthur’s bedroom, and concluded in a little pod, about four feet tall and held up at one end by a blanket wrapped around the back of Arthur’s chest of drawers. At the far end, nestled in a pile of pillows, lay thirty-six-year-old Arthur Shappey and four-year-old Aida Gertrude Theodora Gustava Bonaventura Crieff, both fast asleep.

Carolyn looked at them for a few moments, bemused and impressed and vaguely horrified at the amount of blankets she must have purchased over the years. It was living in this big old house that did it. No matter how you heated it, it was never enough.

She cleared her throat. “Arthur,” she said in a low voice. “Wake up.”

He did so, and immediately grinned, his bleary eyes clearing quickly. “Hello, Mum! Welcome to Blanketsburg. Me and Aida are the joint mayors.”

“I see. You’re going to put all this back where it came from, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah! ‘Course I will.” 

"Well, rouse your fellow mayor, please. I’m an messenger from… one of Blanketsburg’s allied nations, and I have news.”

“Brilliant!”


	4. Glasses/Rip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me and my friend Cai visited Bletchley Park together the last time she was in England, and because we're us, we started talking about a Cabin Pressure Codebreakers AU... 
> 
> And thus, this. 
> 
> It came out a little more Marlas-y than I was expecting, and the wonderful Claire (clairedrawsairdraws) even drew an illustration to go with it. You can find it in my 'Quite Enigmatic Though' tag on tumblr (because, yes, that's what I call this AU in my head.)

 

It could get so you could barely hear people talk without mentally transferring their words into dashes and dots, feeling the conversation like a rhythm to be decoded. It bothered Douglas sometimes, that inability to switch off. He was supposed to be better than this, supposed to go home to Helena at the end of the day and find it easy to say nothing about his work, compartmentalising it neatly into a section of his brain he wouldn’t need again ‘til the next morning. But he wasn’t better. He was just tired.

He’d taken to bringing a flask from home, so that he could take his teabreak outside the Hut, as if that would make any difference to the clattering sounds in his head. There was a bench just outside Hut 19 which was rarely occupied by anyone else, so Douglas could look up at the majestic oak trees, or else stare across at the comically mismatched turrets of the great house, and remember that there were things about this island so ridiculous, so spontaneous… that a man could assemble a mansion out of bricks from all over the known world - a world currently trying to tear itself apart one way or another - that it wasn’t all dimly-lit rooms and code-breaking machinery and the frustrated yells of another cipher broken minutes too late to save a soldier, a battalion, a ship. It was agonising, sometimes, knowing every glitch in transmission could rip a hole through a day’s work, and let lives slip through it all too fast.  

The sound of a silver spoon beating against china made him glance up, and he saw Crieff coming towards him - Martin Crieff, the youngest codebreaker in Hut 19, holding a teacup and peering out from a ragged blue scarf. “H'lo,” he said, teeth chattering.

Douglas grunted in response. Martin came to sit next to him, and grinned. “You should let Arthur make your tea, you know. There’s nothing like it. Shipwright says it’s a lucky thing it hasn’t fallen into enemy hands, or they’d have us by October.”

“Perhaps we should weaponise it, then,” said Douglas dryly. Martin chuckled, and Douglas glanced across at him, noted an RAF pin on the battered scarf. “What’s this? You thinking of a transfer?”

“What? Oh,” said Martin, following Douglas’s gaze. “No, I'm… I’m staying put, I’m afraid. My brother’s in the Air Force, this is one of his.” There was something wistful in his voice. “Lucky sod.”

Douglas leaned back into the wooden back of the bench, and surveyed the grounds. “Bletchley wasn’t your first choice, I take it.”

“No,” said Martin, ruefully. “But it’s good to be used, isn’t it? If only I hadn’t strained the old peepers my whole childhood.” He wrinkled his nose, making his glasses bounce up and down a little. “I failed the physical, just on my eyesight. Very disappointing.”

Douglas hummed sympathetically. “What did you do to strain them so badly? Reading after dark?”

“Writing, mostly.”

“Oh? Writing what?” Poetry, perhaps, Douglas thought. He seemed the type.

The younger man looked bashful. “…Inventing my own ciphers.”

Douglas gave a sudden chuckle. “Well then! I suppose you’re in the right place, after all.”

Martin grinned. “You could be onto something there.” 

It took Douglas the rest of their teabreak to note that he wasn’t hearing Martin in morse, or in keystrokes, or seconds ticking on the clock, just in words. 

Perhaps they were both onto something, in fact. 

 


	5. Parenthood/Epiphany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one from the Ankvandra verse, and it probably takes place very shortly after 'Congratulations'.

 

“I was thinking, you know,” Douglas mused, sipping on whatever fizzy monstrosity Arthur had fetched him from the hospital vending machine, “That if Maxi carries on with this…. this delusion of his own immortality, and never marries and produces an heir, as he keeps threatening, then… Well. You’ve got a boy now.”

Martin turned to him, his face suddenly ashen. “What?!”

Douglas looked pointedly back at him. “King Carlos of Liechtenstein.”

“I… You mean…”

“Yep. You are the father of the first in line to the throne, currently. He might be only six hours old, but he already trumps all of his aunts in terms of, you know. Having a Y chromosome.”

Martin exhaled long and hard. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“Really? You hid your surprise well.”

Douglas received an eyeroll for that. Martin sat very still for a while, then suddenly erupted. “God! Douglas, how am I supposed to bring up a king?!”

Douglas assumed an expression of patient reasonableness. “I wouldn’t look at it like that. It might never happen, so he might as well have as normal a childhood as any other—”

“Yes, but–! One that might result in him becoming king! How do you build up to that?!”

“I have no idea.”

“Being a parent is hard enough, but at least Aida’s probably never going to…. she was born the ninth in line, or something like that.”

“Eleventh. Believe me, I remember the long, long nights explaining it to Arthur.”

“Well then. This is different!”

“Not so different. Everything you’ve been doing for Aida, it’s to make her into a happy, pleasant person, isn’t it?”

Martin chewed his lip. “Yes.”

“And you’ll do exactly the same with Carlos. Whether or not he grows up to be the king, he’s going to be your son, first and foremost.”

“…thanks, Douglas.”

“You’re welcome.”

Douglas drained the can of drink, and chuckled up to the plain hospital ceiling. “Goodness, wait ‘til Carolyn realises that you’ve named, not just a prince, but the actual heir, after her.”

Martin groaned. “Oh, yes. She’ll love that.”

“Let’s not point it out. Let her connect the dots herself.”

They exchanged grins.

“Agreed.”

 


End file.
